


Tony Stark Is Not Well

by The_Peridot_Shade



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Mental Health Issues, Neglect, mentions of Howard Stark - Freeform, mentions of Steve Rogers and Clint Barton, neurodivergence, physical health issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-05-02 09:38:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14541894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Peridot_Shade/pseuds/The_Peridot_Shade
Summary: Alternately titled "In Which Tony Has All the Author's Health Problems Because He Has Half of Them in Canon Anyway"A character study/exploration of the canonical health issues Tony is faced with throughout his life, plus a few more I threw in because a) I identify strongly with Tony and shoved all my problems onto him for stress-relief; and b) having had a lot of his canonical health problems myself (i.e. anxiety, PTSD, heavy metal poisoning, insomnia), it made sense for certain things to be happening behind the scenes, things a normal audience wouldn't have the context to realize just from watching the movies.Heed the warnings—should you read this, you will know a LOT more about what chronic illness is like, and what sort of mindset it engenders, than you probably ever wanted to know.





	Tony Stark Is Not Well

The first sign of what Tony Stark will face all his life is not, as most people assume, Afghanistan.No, his health shows the first signs of being compromised at six—the world remembers that year for his first engine, but the memory is tainted for Tony by recollections of days in bed following his tonsillectomy, creating blueprints to stave off pain and boredom.It took the better part of three months for anyone to realize that his persistent bouts of strep were more than a lonely child's attempt to gain attention; by that point, antibiotics, even in shot form, were essentially useless.It won't be the first time Tony's ailments are left unattended too long.

 

At eight, the physical downsides of Tony's particular brand of genius become clear.Tony is like a sponge, absorbing all the information his surroundings provide him and placing each new tidbit in a network of interconnected facts and figures and theories.Of course, that means _all_ new information is processed—background noise isn't all that in the background, light and sound and movement are all registered in every possible nuance, scents remain as intense over time as they are at the first whiff.Tony has no filter between him and the rest of the world, and he can only learn to cope with it all.Fortunately, he has a lifetime in which to do it.He plays loud music to drown out other sounds, develops eating habits that revolve as much around texture and smell as taste.But even he can only do so much to combat his own nature; migraines are an inescapable fact of his existence.Half his reputation for irresponsibility later on comes from people assuming 'I have a migraine and cannot attend today' means 'I got drunk last night even though we had a meeting scheduled and am now hungover.'Not to say that he _doesn't_ overindulge occasionally—it's just not as often as everyone seems to think.

 

Mono.In hindsight, Tony shouldn't be surprised he contracted the Epstein Barr virus at fourteen—he's always been careful about venereal disease, but fucking _mononucleosis_ isn't ever something he thought to guard against.If he was anyone else, it'd just be an inconvenience.But the virus…lingers, in some people, people with already weakened immune systems.Tony's lifestyle's never exactly been healthy, and he's not even just talking about the partying.Erratic eating and sleeping habits take their toll.Stress and anxiety make it worse.His adrenals are shot to hell by the time he reaches twenty—his liver is slowly reaching crisis point.At thirty-eight, a hunk of metals and radiation in his chest and months of torture and captivity stress his body to the max.Before the palladium even had a chance to make him ill, he was down for months with chronic fatigue and intermittent bouts of sore throats and respiratory infections.He thought of taking a vacation, but, well…he doesn't think he could get near sun, sand, and water without a breakdown of epic proportions, and his lungs don't do so well with humidity or altitude these days.

 

Heavy metal poisoning lingers.Replacing the core—that was only the start.Now he has to deal with the effects.His insomnia was already pretty fucking terrible, but it reaches legendary levels of Horribleness after Afghanistan, and never quite recovers even after the ordeal with the almost-dying-of-palladium-poisoning.His liver, overburdened with trying to filter the toxins from his body, plagues him with constant nausea.There's a reason he mainly sticks to smoothies and shakes.His doctor recommends he stop drinking—which he tries—and that he cut back on caffeine consumption—ha!He adds garlic and Spanish radish to his shakes and grimaces as he chokes them down.He takes iron supplements and freeform amino acids to help his body rebuild the destroyed tissue in his organs.It works, eventually, but not entirely.By the time the Avengers assemble for the first time, he's up to at least one solid meal a day.

 

His thyroid is next.Fucking Epstein Barr likes to attack organs at random, like some sort of biological karmic lottery designed solely to screw him over.He runs cold all the time, keeping his lab at a temperature that's not precisely optimal for his tech.His heart, already subject to arrhythmia, decides to race between 3 and 4 pm every day like clockwork.The first time he notices it, he has a panic attack…which, really, only compounds the problem.

 

The other Avengers mock him for the blueberries, but, well, they've never had their dopamine production drop so low they can barely drag themselves out of bed in the morning.The berries are one of the only things his doctor's recommended that he actually enjoys, so fuck off, Barton.

 

Everyone forgets, in the heat of the moment, just what are the consequences of removing or even just changing the core of the arc reactor.The motion of his own breath, let alone any other physical exertion, without the magnetic force the reactor provides, drives the shrapnel deeper into his flesh.That would be painful enough without the risk to his heart.Most of those around him understand that there _is_ a risk, but they can't grasp the nature of it.They don't realize that replacing the reactor is not some magical cure—the damage is still there, clotted wounds torn open again as the working reactor pulls the shrapnel back toward the surface.It has always been one of the ironies of his life that the acts that save him only hurt him more.

 

Tony has a love/hate relationship with sleep.On the one hand, his mind is constantly whirring, examining and discarding possibilities, crafting solutions, posing questions.It is impossible to quiet, so he merely accepts what rest he can snatch.Sleep is, often, a necessary inconvenience—vital to his functioning, but consuming time that could be devoted to his craft.Yet he dreads slipping between sheets and closing his eyes, terrified at the thought of lying there sleepless and mind buzzing, horrified at the nightmares that wake him screaming.It is all too easy to let that fear rule him, to allow days to pass without catching a wink, to force his body past its limits until at last the slumber that claims him is deep and dreamless.To others' surprise, that is not the worst—the nightmares account for only a small fraction of his insomnia.

 

Long-term sleep deprivation is a strange thing.Exhausted and jittery all at once, even without his considerable caffeine intake, hyper-vigilance keeps him alert until dawn; then fatigue and a muddled head crashes down on him around midmorning.Yet he dares not nap—sleeping during the day will only perpetuate his inverse cortisol cycle.So he stays awake for days on end, not out of forgetfulness as his teammates believe, or fear as Pepper assumes; he simply cannot rest.The core truth of him is this: he cannot remember a time when he wasn't tired.PTSD doesn't stop for something as simple as exhaustion…a sleepless night can only lead to another, when the terror only worsens as his thoughts run together.

 

For all that Tony tends more towards the hyperverbal in response to normal nerves, the deep-rooted panic that comes in the wake of trauma is responsible for all his truly speechless moments.Part of it is the sensation of weight on his lungs—anyone gasping in air with every breath would find it difficult to speak—but there's more to it than that.Sometimes, the fatigue renders every word a lump of lead forced from numb lips.Other times, the terror that _he might be heard_ quiets him…somewhat voluntarily.But there are moments when he _wants_ to speak, when he _needs_ to communicate—and cannot even move his lips.He is always in survival mode, and the oft-forgotten instinct to freeze in the face of danger plays a larger role in panic attacks than any of his companions would ever guess.

 

The reduced lung capacity becomes a big problem the second a missile hits his house.Not only is his home falling apart around him, there's an awful lot of dust in the air—and smoke, and various other contaminants from the missile.His suit has a filtration system, but _Pepper comes first_ , which is absolutely the right call but still means he's breathing that shit in for at least a minute.And then he's _underwater_ , which, well, is its own problem.By the time the whole Killian ordeal is over, he has to make multiple decisions about his health: undergo surgery or keep the arc reactor, go on corticosteroids to reduce the inflammation in his lungs and risk becoming ill as his immune response is repressed or go without and risk hypoxia, use Extremis or not.He has to consider every combination, every possible outcome and interaction, every potential side effect.It isn't… _hard_ , precisely (he is a genius), but having to constantly take his life into his own hands is—wearing.

 

The problem with Extremis, besides the obvious, is that the human immune system and healing process are already complex balancing acts without _speeding them up_ , pushing them to levels beyond the normal capacity of the human body.It requires fuel, so his caloric intake is bumped up significantly.Methylation and its related processes are also sped up to compensate—including production and disposal of _all_ his neurotransmitters.He's never had so many damn mood swings in his life, is so anxious nearly all the time that it seems like his hands are always shaking when he tries to work.At the same time, he is sleeping more than he ever has and _still_ never feels rested.

 

Tony's not surprised when his PTSD comes back to haunt him at the worst possible time.Trauma is perhaps the least polite of all his problems, given that it strikes unpredictably, in unexpected ways, and is surprisingly physical in all the worst ways.Panic attacks are so much worse when you already have trauma related to being unable to breathe.Insomnia tends to mess up his appetite as well as overall energy level, and all the psychological stuff is harder to cope with when tired and light-headed.It's a vicious cycle, a particularly hard one to break.Ultron is just the icing on an already shitty cake.

 

For the first few months of his 'retirement' from the Avengers, Tony follows a strange sort of pattern: gradually shift his bedtime back a half-hour at a time, get a few good nights of dreamless sleep, get triggered or have a nightmare or a dissociative episode or whatever weirdness his brain decides to throw at him, and have to start all over again.It takes a while, but with careful management of vitamins, minerals, neurotransmitters, and hormones, he's finally the healthiest he's been…well, to be honest, ever.

 

Siberia destroys all his hard work.If the physical trauma weren't bad enough (even bruising can really screw up his already compromised respiratory system, and _he had a vibranium alloy shield slammed repeatedly into his chest_ ), the nightmares upturn his carefully regulated sleep cycle.The anger, though, is the worst.Growing up with the father Tony had…let's just say he is afraid of his own anger, having seen how easily it can turn into cruelty.He feels so guilty for losing his temper in that bunker, not because he had no cause to be angry, but rather because he _did_.He is so angry, all the time.Refusing to contact Rogers has never been about pride—he's just terrified he'll do or say something that he'll regret later.So he represses, because that's what he's always done, until it bursts out unexpectedly, uncontrollably.And that makes him fear it even more.But all that emotion is just energy, and it has to go _somewhere_ , so it tenses his muscles 'til they ache, roils in his gut and steals his appetite, wears down every organ in his body as it struggles to compensate for the overabundance of neurotransmitters.It takes a lot of creative frenzies and strings of expletives before he can even approach being calm.

 

The decision to attach another arc reactor to himself is both easier and harder than Tony expects.It was part of him for so long, saved his life and damned it only to save it again.A certain part of him is always going to associate the reactor with the person he _became_ in the wake of trauma, the person who had finally managed to do some good in the world; yet that part is at war with the memories of waking up mid-surgery, looking in the mirror to discover black lines crawling up his veins, being betrayed and all but torn apart over and over.This one won't be nearly so arduous to remove, but it's still a reminder of every time the greatest things in his life turned into the worst and back again.There's a sort of symmetry to it, Tony thinks; he has come full circle once more.He just wishes it didn't feel so much like slipping backwards.


End file.
